see? I have done some gaming!

The Mad Padre finally got some of his pictures off of his phone and emailed the links to me to share.

First up was a game of the new Too Fat Lardy rules Chain of Command.

end of the patrol phase

my German Jump-off points in good cover and close to the objective

Mike's jump off points not as well situated

Mike comes on strong

my section in the ruins on the left gets pounded, but I reinforce with the 4th section I chose as my support

I blast Mike's section covering the crossroads and you can see in the background my reserve section coming across the field to outflank him 

I've decided I quite like Chain of Command a lot. Previously I had thought the platoon level skirmish of limited potential, but Richard's blog posts about his North African campaign games featuring very limited terrain make me think that the late '44 battles in the featureless polders of Holland might actually be gameable. I also wonder about the potential for more recent Canadian operations in the Panjwayi.

Next up was a game of Maurice. We used the terrain generator system from the rules and my Austro-Bavarian force got a nice defensive position between two villages  to hold off Mike who commanded my Prussian 'blue meanies'. Mike outnumbered me by about 1.5 to 1, although I got to use my supercool redoubt, just because of the coolness.

Austrians in the background, Prussians advancing in the foreground

Mike\s grenadiers seize the objective, the bierhaus

Pandours try to snipe from the woods

the redoubt

Even though I blew a hole or two in Mike's center, his grenadiers were firmly ensconced in the bierhaus and made my right flank untenable. Although in this game you can see we've quite a few units on table and I think we've pushed the upper limits of Maurice. Next time smaller armies of 12-15 units I think. For bigger games, I think Black Powder would work better.

This holiday season I am hoping to get together with the Padre for more Chain of Command. Him being a grad student and me being off until the New Year (the joy of being in a factory again!) will make this very possible. As an early present for myself I ordered in an extra hard copy of CoC for myself and have been reading it and pondering rebasing a couple of platoons from my 15mm collection.